Happiness is a complex emotion of general positive feelings, such as joy and contentment. Many psychological studies have correlated happiness with good health, purpose and overall life satisfaction. However, how much of one’s happiness is influenced by where they live and related factors beyond one’s control?
Despite being difficult to quantify, the Cantril life ladder aims to do this with a score from 0 to 100, with 100 being the most happy and 0 being the least.
This study aims to explore the corelation between happiness and common metrics of a well-run country in 2023.
| country_code | country | happiness_2023 | gdp_2023 | development_2023 | gini_2023 | corruption_2023 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 46 | FIN | Finland | 77.0 | 45400.0 | 0.948 | 27.3 | 87.0 |
| 66 | ISL | Iceland | 75.6 | 59300.0 | 0.972 | 26.1 | 72.0 |
| 38 | DNK | Denmark | 75.0 | 61300.0 | 0.962 | 30.4 | 90.0 |
| 32 | CRI | Costa Rica | 73.8 | 14300.0 | 0.833 | 50.5 | 55.0 |
| 107 | NLD | Netherlands | 72.5 | 51300.0 | 0.955 | 30.5 | 79.0 |
| 127 | SLE | Sierra Leone | 34.7 | 1110.0 | 0.467 | 38.3 | 35.0 |
| 28 | COD | Congo, Dem. Rep. | 33.8 | 538.0 | 0.522 | 46.6 | 20.0 |
| 20 | BWA | Botswana | 33.3 | 7270.0 | 0.731 | 55.0 | 59.0 |
| 101 | MWI | Malawi | 32.7 | 557.0 | 0.517 | 47.7 | 34.0 |
| 0 | AFG | Afghanistan | 14.5 | 378.0 | 0.496 | 39.9 | 20.0 |
The economic health of a country can be measured with its gross domestic profit (GDP) per capita ($USD). This measures the amount of economic activity generated in a year divided by its population. We can see here a correlation between GDP/capita and happiness, concentrated in North America, Europe and Oceana. However, this is not always correlated, since Costa Rica is one of the happiess countries yet with a lower GDP/capita, so we must investigate beyond this metric.
A healthy society can be attributed to low inequality among the population and continuous development in quality of life. The Gini coefficient reprersents income inequality in a society, with a higher number being more inequality. Human Development Index is an index used to rank countries by level of “human development”. It contains three dimensions: health level, educational level and living standard.
We can see here patters with lower inequality and higher development correlate with happiness.
Lastly, the integrity of those in power can greatly determine how a country is run. The corruption perception index ranks countries/territories based on how corrupt their public sector is perceived to be from 0 to 100, in which 0 is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean. We see a strong pattern between happiness and less corruption, with also correlates with GDP/capita likely as a result of a well-run country.